What We’re Watching, Vol. 12

At The Attic on Eighth, we are clearly a multimedia bunch, with our regular reading discussions and film lists. In fact, some of our very first interactions as friends were excitedly messaging scene for scene reactions to shared shows across oceans and time zones. In this monthly series we gather to chat our most recent views. Nothing keeps us close like binge-watching together, even if we’re not in the same room.

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As the last couple of months have brought with them a new normal unlike we've experienced before, the comforts of home entertainment have proven more essential than ever. Whether serving as a break between our now usual indoor tasks or offering an escape from our anxiety at the world outside, what we’re looking for right now is all about comfort and ease. 

From surprisingly deep comedy, to classic films and highly anticipated adaptations, here’s what we’re watching this month...

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M. A. McCuen

After weeks of my sister begging me to try it, I started watching Diary of a Future President. This show is honestly such a delight. It’s on Disney+ and potentially made for a slightly younger audience, but I fell in love with it. It’s about a precocious, overachieving Cuban American 12-year-old named Elena who deals with coming-of-age life issues like friendship drama and first periods. As someone (and I feel like many of us are in the same boat) who was a precocious, overachieving kid back in the day, I felt so endeared to watch this bright, ambitious girl discover her world. The show features some really progressive plotlines and it celebrates and uplifts characters that don’t often get featured in family and kid’s programming. I think I was most impressed by its casual trans-inclusion, something that I feel we never see in family shows. Anyway, it’s only ten episodes so it is easy to binge and a perfectly comforting show to watch. Also, if you are missing Jane the Virgin, it has Big Jane Energy, using the same set and similar background music!

Kara Thompson

I read Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere back in 2017 and have been anxiously awaiting the TV adaptation ever since it was announced. The first episode premiered in March on Hulu and a new episode is released every week, which brings me back to my high school days in a way, since now I can usually binge a show as fast as I want, but it’s nice having something to look forward to. Little Fires Everywhere is set in the--very real--city of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a “planned community” where everything is monitored to maintain perfection. The Richardson family, who look like the epitome of a white suburban family, have their lives changed forever when they rent out a home in Shaker Heights to an artist mother and her teenage daughter. It’s a very interesting story and I think the TV series does the book justice. 

I was also very excited to discover The English Game on Netflix. I love period dramas and my partner loves football; The English Game is the perfect combination of both. Set in the 19th-century, this mini-series gives us a glimpse into the history of football during the rise of working class teams when wealthy men used to dominate the game. I can’t say that I have an interest in any sport, really, but I have found The English Game very enjoyable to watch. 

Rachel Tay

Having recently exhausted my Netflix queue — I’m now on the last seasons of my Gossip Girl rewatch, which is just as terrible as it is entertaining (though I can never seem to remember the show as either of the two) — I couldn’t have been happier about the return of HBO’s My Brilliant Friend to TV. First aired in 2018, season one of the show was a commendably faithful, knockout adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name by Italian director, Saverio Costanzo. With its artfully gritty landscapes of a midcentury working-class neighbourhood, gradations of dialect hanging from each character’s words, and a deceptively lively Max Richter soundtrack to accompany an equally unsettled interplay of beauty and brutality, Constanza’s rendition of Ferrante’s Naples impresses in bringing the setting’s warmth and violence closer — almost too close — to us. As a result, we cannot help, as the novel’s eponymous “brilliant friends” do, but hunger for a release from destitution and misogyny’s suffocating confines. 

Thus far, four episodes in, the second season of the show has proven likewise successful in its fidelity to Ferrante’s words. As its main characters grow out of girlhood and into their ambitions, this season brings Lenù and Lila further away from the somber neighbourhood in which they grew up. But just as their mutual rivalry persists, it seems the stresses of conflict — political, class, and gender — linger. This is ultimately a tale of female friendship and creativity inextricably enmeshed in the material, and a story that I cannot wait to see unfold week after week on screen.

Rhea Peters

All of the free time this past month has provided led to finally watching a bunch of old movies that have been on my watch-list for the longest time. Two of my favourites from these were Rebecca (1940) and Vanity Fair (2004). Both films came highly recommended and are easily available on Netflix. Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first American project, and has a spooky, sinister vibe that is reminiscent of the director’s other works and is very much on par with the novel. I don’t think anyone else could have nailed this as well as he did. Vanity Fair stars Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp, whose stunning portrayal alone makes the movie worth watching. From impoverished orphan to society sweetheart, Becky’s tenacity and ability to play men at their own game is a little reminiscent of Witherspoon’s Elle Woods. 

I also got through the first few episodes of The English Game, a period drama/sports show that talks about the invention of football and its hand in breaking down class divides. While I have no interest in the sport itself, the story and history was very engaging. What I loved most was the upstairs-downstairs strain that reminded me a lot of Fellows’ other project, Downton Abbey. The English Game is nothing compared to Downton, of course, but if you’re going through a period-drama dry spell like I was, it is worth looking into.

Olivia Gündüz-Willemin

Like Kara, I’ve been immersed in Little Fires Everywhere the last couple of days. I also read the novel back in 2017 and it turned into an immediate favorite, pulling me out of a reading block and reminding me of my love of contemporary literature. I was thrilled when Celeste Ng – the author – announced that the novel was being turned into a television show by Reese Witherspoon’s production company. Ng acted as a producer, and so for once, I was very confident going into the series that it would be a good one. It has not disappointed. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s an exquisite adaptation. Everything is well thought-out, the actors spectacularly cast, and all of the subtext from the novel comes through sharply – the social commentary that borders on satire with the Richardson family is pointed, and I am so excited to see how the rest of the series plays out. 

That being said, Little Fires Everywhere isn’t the only good show I’ve watched lately. The past couple of weeks have been a treasure chest of incredible finds. Two series in particular stand out: Unorthodox and Feel Good, both very different in tone and genre. Unorthodox is a miniseries based on Deborah Feldman’s 2012 autobiography Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots and follows the story of Esty, a nineteen year old girl from the Satmar community in Williamsburg, New York who decides to leave an unhappy arranged marriage and flee to Berlin to seek out musical studies and begin a new life. Feel Good, meanwhile is a semi-autobiographic story, created by Canadian comedian Mae Martin, and takes place as Mae establishes her stand-up career in London while simultaneously battling her past addictions, coming to terms with the fluidity of her gender, and finding herself in a very intense romance with a “straight” woman named George. 

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